Old Blog

"It is the greatest mistake," he [George Gurdjieff] said, "to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour. We think that if a man is called Ivan he is always Ivan. Nothing of the kind. Now he is Ivan, in another minute he is Peter, and a minute later he is Nicholas, Sergius, Matthew, Simon. And all of you think he is Ivan. You know that Ivan cannot do a certain thing. He cannot tell a lie for instance. Then you find he has told a lie and you are surprised he could have done so. And, indeed, Ivan cannot lie; it is Nicholas who lied. And when the opportunity presents itself Nicholas cannot help lying. You will be astonished when you realize what a multitude of these Ivans and Nicholases live in one man. If you learn to observe them there is no need to go to a cinema.” George Gurdjieff as quoted by PD Ouspensky in "In Search of the Miraculous"

This lack of unity within us was considered a radical idea one hundred years ago when Mr. Gurdjieff first began teaching in Russia. Neuroscience is catching up to what he taught. Unfortunately, neuroscience is unable to verify the next part of this equation; that it is possible to develop the untiy we 'imagine' we possess. But only after much work and development on ourselves.

Here is a lin to a really cute video designed to appeal to both the right (visual) and left (linguistic) brains that show some of the biological basis for this lack of unity.